Video game number two hundred and ninety eight: Space Invaders Infinity Gene

Video game review number two hundred and ninety eight in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Space Invaders: Infinity Gene".

A couple of weeks ago, I played and reviewed Astro Invaders for the DS. I played it because it was advertised as a sequel to asteroids, and it sounded sort of fun. After all, I grew up playing that game in the arcades (and on my Atari 2600), so I consider myself in the prime demographic for remakes like that.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene is no Astro Invaders....and that's a good thing.

This game is a genuine remake/sequel/update of the classic, and it's actually pretty fun. The classic formula is intact (shoot waves of UFOs), but now you have power ups, and the all important ability to move your ship vertically instead of just horizontally. Hallelujah.

I've been through the first couple of stages and I'm just getting into the third (each stage has six levels in it), and the enemies keep on coming. There are definitely things I like about this game (it feels old school, yet it's still challenging and true to the original)...and there are things I hate. The music is incredibly repetitive, and the graphics (though clean and sharp) are rather boring. It's not quite black and white, but there certainly is a lack of color here. A few background colors are added here and there as you progress through the stages, but for the most part, it's fairly bland. I feel like there could have been more of an upgrade in the visuals.

Overall Score? 6/10. I suppose this is a decent remake, and I've had a little fun playing it...but there's nothing remarkable about it that makes me want to keep playing. Space Invaders was a great game when I was a kid, but that was 30 years ago. In those 30 years, there's never been a great update for it, and this one wouldn't really qualify either. I'm not going to say I wouldn't play it if I was board and it was on my console, but if it was in the arcade and I had a quarter, I'd spend it on almost any other game there...including the classic.

Achievements? Just this: One lonely little achievement from the "classic" level of the game, where I managed to shoot the UFO. The others all come from beating the game (which I haven't done yet), or getting huge chain combos, which I've been close to, but have not yet achieved.